


Gruesome

by deathwailart



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Body Horror, Collectors, Female Character of Color, Gen, Horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-07
Updated: 2014-08-07
Packaged: 2018-02-12 04:38:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2096064
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deathwailart/pseuds/deathwailart
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Collector ship is a horror even a hardened soldier struggles with.</p>
<p>Written for the 30 day drabble challenge: gruesome</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gruesome

From the moment they step foot on the disabled Collector vessel her stomach turns. Thane and Miranda are with her, the overly loud click of their boots and the soft hiss of the breathers on their helmets. She's not used to the red eyes on Thane's helmet. She doesn't usually bring him too often on missions, there's something in the way he looks at her, the way it makes her think _disconnected disconnected_ over and over, like every word and action damns her. Miranda has an almost permanent spot on the squad but Cassandra isn't entirely sure why. Is she trying to make Miranda realise she screwed up? Like some sort of punishment with every angry word or each time she stares someone down with her gun pointed at their head. Or does she crave validation? For Miranda to look at her and perhaps say something. To realise that she didn't bring back the saviour of the Citadel who didn't compromise her personal code or morals even once.  
  
Back to the matter at hand.  
  
Cassandra's never had phobias. Well she didn't before and she doesn't know how to categorise what she worries about now so she doesn't count it. Insects never bothered her, certainly not bees or wasps but the Collector ship is making her flesh crawl. She wants to itch and scratch but she can't, not in her armour, not when she can't even take her helmet off and rub her face. There's nowhere safe to look, not when the floor gleams like a polished mirror, reflecting back the row after row of pods. She has to fight the urge to pick up her sniper rifle and stare down the scope, just to see if there's a horrified face like on Horizon where they were in stasis. A mouth open in a soundless scream, eyes wide.  
  
Some things are worse than the worries that keep her up at night.  
  
It's when the dripping starts that her mouth fills with acid and she has to swallow it down, the lemon taste linger and she's glad no one can actually see her face right now. She doesn't want to know what it is, glad she didn't bring Mordin because he'd probably take a sample or theorise, or even worse he would know and confirm. It's not like she's got a weak stomach because she'd seen terrible things before husks started haunting her dreams. She's an infiltrator, she's waded through things she doesn't want to know about, has had to lie down for hours at a time in hellish places without even flinching but this is something else.  
  
When they find the corpses she retches violently, dimly aware of Miranda and Thane's reactions. They're not even people now. If she didn't know what she was looking for then she could dismiss it as some sort of refuse, waste. Mangled limbs and melted faces and Jacob's words come to her again, because she wasn't – she has to swallow hard, has to tell herself to keep it together – a wet mess. She was dry. Burned. But she was probably like this to anyone else, like every corpse they found on every planet they explored stopping Saren. That was a mercy, not this, not this fused mess that makes her boots stick to the floor when they can't quite tear themselves away, angling for a better look. The faces are as bad as the limbs, just bits and pieces that melt into the general mass.  
  
This is the fate of humanity if they don't finish the mission so she swallows, jerks her head and gets them moving again.  
  
It's after the mission that she curls on the floor of her shower, scrubbing herself raw to match her aching throat after a solid hour of heaving, curled over the toilet.


End file.
